


Waitin' For The Tube Underground (Underground)

by Chokopoppo



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Also everyone is human AU, F/M, I guess maybe he's not but that would be really weird, Not really romance just losers, Reincarnation AU, That is my excuse for why everyone is mystically alive and not corrupted by magic and power, Whatever floats your boat I guess, or at least Bartimaeus is human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 00:44:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokopoppo/pseuds/Chokopoppo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two losers discuss the death of dreams, the emptiness of romance, and coffee. Which are of approximately the same importance, anyway.</p>
<p>Reincarnation AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waitin' For The Tube Underground (Underground)

**Author's Note:**

> Ptolemy's Gate broke my heart years ago, and now, I seek revenge. Behold: two losers, mysteriously not dead or deformed, talking shit about their suddenly-mortal bffsies and each other. I wrote this a little more than half a year ago, but catty friends always hold a special place in my heart.

They stood, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for their ride down at the tube. Kitty, just having gotten off her shift at the café, had passed Nathaniel a drink and held on to one herself, sipping occasionally. He was grateful, though he gave little more than a curt “thanks” – it had been a long night at the office, and besides that the winter was agonizingly cold, even underground. Gusts poured through the tunnels whenever a train came through, scattering his once-neat hair above and around his face. He pressed the cup against his cheeks whenever he thought no one (Kitty) was looking.

Kitty, meanwhile, was slouched, one hand in the pocket of a leather jacket, face cut with apathy and vague disgust at the universe at large. Her hair, short as it was, had still been shoved into a messy ponytail – most of it had drifted out in strands that floated around her head in a dark halo. Occasionally, she rubbed a palm over her forehead to push it out of her eyes, but this rarely held consistent. Habitual, angry sighs came heavily. “All our friends are getting hitched,” she snapped, lip curling, “or laid. Consistently. Without paying. You know what I mean,” she grumbled when Nathaniel elbowed her hard, “everyone else is, like, _finding_ someone. Why not us? Even Bart, you know? I mean, fucking shoot me. _Bartimaeus_ found someone before us.”

“Bart –is- almost forty, Kitty.”

“Yeah! He is, like five thousand years old, and he STILL found someone interested in his crusty flat ass.” She sighed again, angrily, took a swig. “God, I can’t believe they’re moving in together.”

Nathaniel nodded. “It’s pretty surreal. Every time I think about them fucking, I die a little inside.”

She turned to face him for the first time, pivoting her head to pin him with an unamused stare. “Why do you think about your friends fucking?”

He didn’t make eye contact, but his eyebrows dipped slightly in confusion, as though it were the first time he’d considered the question. “I don’t know,” he said eventually, “but it keeps appearing in my nightmares.”

“Do _I_ appear in your nightmares?”

“No.”

She turned away, face passive once again. “Too bad.”

A train screamed past, whipping Nathaniel’s hair against his eyes. When his vision cleared, she was swallowing drink and looking thoughtful. Dark eyebrows knitted together. “So…” she started, stepping delicately into the topic, “what’s the deal with you and Jane?”

Nathaniel scowled, turned away. “None of your damn business.”

She scoffed, but didn’t turn to face him. “None of my damn…I’m not asking for details or anything, it’s just that it’s my best friend and my roommate, and I’d kind of like to know what’s going on.”

“So would I,” he muttered into his coffee, “but life’s a little more complicated than that.”

She watched him out of the corner of her eye, then sighed heavily. “So I guess none of our dreams are comin’ true, huh?” Ran a palm over her forehead again irritably. “I’m just…what am I doing with myself, you know? I’m gonna be 30 in a few years. Like, five years. Maybe more. You know what I mean. I figured leaving college was going to kickstart my real life. Four years later, everything’s been kicked, and nothing’s started.” She sighed, angrily, tossed back the dregs in her bottle.

…Bottle.

Nathaniel did a double-take. “Wait, back up. Kitty. Kitty, is that BEER?”

“Mhm.”

“Holy sh- Kitty, you’re about to get on the TUBE. This is not exactly the time to get drunk! Christ – I thought you were having coffee.”

Kitty fixed him with a Look. “Nat, I’m a barista. I’m around coffee enough in the day, I don’t DRINK it too.”

A gust blew through the station, cast dark hair twisting around her face, and she was made of sharpness and angles and darkness, and for a second, train barreling past, Nathaniel remembered her from elsewhere, from jackboots in an alleyway to silver pendant flying to hands knotted in his shirt, eyebrows bowing, hand offered and his name, real and not, breaking from her mouth – 

And the train shuddered by, and it was gone.

“Nothing to say about that, huh?” She smirked, tried to take another swig from the bottle, and (disappointingly) found it empty. “Shit. Well, when’s our train getting here? I’m ready for bed.”

He feigned checking his watch. “No idea. Maybe in ten minutes.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You lost your watch two weeks ago, you cretin. Turned my flat over looking for it.”

With nothing better to say, he just laughed, and after a moment, she did too. She didn’t ask when he reached to her and took her hand in his.

Nathaniel was born in fire, and Kitty Jones had stopped him from burning.


End file.
